DMK to take up alleged assault of Tamil students at JNU by ABVP

Chennai: Even as the BJP is trying its best to come up in Tamil Nadu politics, the DMK has launched a movement to highlight the role of ABVP, the student body of the BJP, in assaulting Tamil students at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in the national capital.

Udhayanidhi Stalin, the DMK Youth and Sports minister and son of Chief Minister, is taking up the mantle to undertake a campaign against the BJP across Tamil Nadu by highlighting the attack on the Tamil students by the ABVP.

The Tamil Nadu unit of the BJP has been showing signs of a slow revival ever since K. Annamalai, a former IPS officer assumed office as the state president of the party. Annamalai has been aggressive on the field and has been giving a new life to the saffron party in the state.

However, Sunday’s incident at JNU wherein Tamil students were allegedly assaulted by the ABVP workers has been taken up aggressively by the DMK.

The DMK Youth wing secretary, CVMP Ezhilarasan along with the Minister for Youth and Sports Affairs, Udhayanidhi Stalin has decided to conduct a seminar at JNU on the teachings of Dravidian ideologue Periyar.

Evoking Periyar against the ABVP assault in JNU is a clever political ploy of the DMK to checkmate the growing popularity of the BJP in Tamil Nadu.

Dr. M.R. Swaminathan, retired Professor of Sociology from Tiruchy college, while speaking to IANS said, “The DMK is playing a very calculated political game. The party knows that evoking Periyar and Dravidian ideology is the easy way to checkmate the BJP in Tamil Nadu. The DMK leaders, including Stalin and Udhayanidhi Stalin speaking regularly against the alleged ABVP assault at JNU is to make sure that anti-saffron feelings are developed in the state.”

With the AIADMK leaders, Edappadi K. Palaniswami and O. Panneerselvam fighting with each other, there is a general belief in political and academic circles that the BJP will fill the vacuum of the Dravidian major, and the DMK knows that BJP being an aggressive political party will use all the weapons in its armoury to surge ahead. To checkmate such a move, the DMK is evoking Periyar and propagating his ideology on the JNU campus.

–IANS